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“A robot that infiltrated my phone to ask which animal I like best.”

“Vultures.” Ty supplied easily.

“Finished.” Thar set the phone down and slid it back towards Gion. “All handled. You can thank me later, Guy.”

Gion didn’t bother to correct him about using that damn nickname. He was too busy playing with his Match’s curly hair. She was endlessly fascinating to him. A small, colorful magical creature who made him believe in happily ever afters. Ty was all he ever wanted to focus on. “What are you doing today and how quickly can you cancel it?”

“I can’t cancel it. I have a very important appointment.”

He dipped his head to speak into her ear. “There are some things we could be doing upstairs that are more important.” He promised.

That got Ty giggling.

Gion’s mouth curved, charmed by her.

“I’m trying to eat.” Cross complained.

Energy slammed through the room, signaling someone had just jumped into the kingdom. Gion had plastic strategically positioned to keep intruders out of his home, but there wasn’t much he could do to stop them from showing up on the patios. Not unless Ty let him execute a few and string up their corpses as a warning to others, and so far she’d vetoed that idea.

It was frustrating.

He started to rise, instinctively shielding his Match from possible danger. It was probably Tessie and Job arriving for breakfast, but if it wasn’t the trespasser had about two seconds to live.

“Honey, I’m home!” Isaacs called out, strolling through the door like he owned the place.

“Aw fuck.” Cross muttered.

Gion had to agree. Technically, Isaacs lived in the Water Kingdom, but Gion did his best to forget that fact. The Air Phase came and went without notice, so sometimes weeks would go by without seeing him. Gion would just begin to think he’d gotten lucky and Isaacs had perished in some painful, awful, mysterious way… but then the asshole inevitably turned up again.

“Isaacs!” Ty beamed. “Right on time.”

“Hey, Ike.” Tharsis watched Isaacs over the top of his paperback. “You ever hear of Happy Applewhite?”

“The robot?” Isaacs asked breezily and then didn’t wait for Thar to answer. “You ready, Ty?”

A terrible suspicion took root in Gion’s mind. “Wait, your appointment is with him?” He gestured towards Isaacs, his incredulous eyes on his Match.

“Yep. Don’t even bother asking me what it’s about. It’s a secret.” She glanced Isaacs’ way, her face alight with mischief. “Don’t you tell him, either.”

Isaacs made a show of locking his lips closed with an invisible key. “I won’t say a single word.”

“Ty.” Gion took a deep breath. “Angel, I don’t like you having ‘appointments’ with Isaacs.”

She blinked up at him in mystification. “Why not?”

“Yeah, why not?” Isaacs chimed in, forgetting (or not caring) that he was supposed to be “not saying a word” to Gion.

Ty liked Isaacs, for reasons beyond Gion’s comprehension. Since he did everything possible to keep his Match happy, Gion therefore went out of his way not to murder the bastard.

But it was hard.

Gion had been a general of the Air House forces, and Isaacs had been his second-in-command. It was a hypercompetitive, violent environment, and it was impossible to turn off the animosity it bred, even here in the serenity of the Water Kingdom.

For whatever reason, Ty seemed to think of Isaacs as Gion’s kid brother, though. Like their mutual hatred was just some kind of adorable sibling game of teasing and pranks.

He fixed his icy blue eyes on Isaacs, doing his best not to blast him through a wall. “Because I don’t like it when manipulative dickheads coerce my Match into a sketchy rendezvous. What the hell could you two need to meet about?”

“We’re running away together to Acapulco. What else?” Isaacs mocked.